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A review by silverliningsandpages
Shadows on the Tundra by Dalia Grinkevičiūtė
5.0
Well, if you’re looking for a book about perseverance and fierce optimism, it is this survival memoir, which has been compared with the writing of Anne Frank and Primo Levi.
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In 1941, teenager Dalia and her family are deported from Lithuania to a labour camp in Siberia. She is the strongest in her family and labours 16 hours a day. Aged 21, she escapes the Gulag and returns to her homeland. She keeps her memories on scraps of paper and buries them in a glass jar in the garden so that they are hidden from the KGB. They’re discovered in 1991, four years after her death.
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“You have just taken your first step in the battle for life.”
This account is extraordinary in how immediate and vital the writing is. The conditions in which these poor people had to exist were deeply harrowing and they were utterly brutalised. The descriptions of this icy hell and bleak assistance are very vivid and the suffering relentless. And yet the hope and resilience of Dalia are remarkable:
“During the days that followed, a kind of tenacity began to take shape as part of my character. I became stubborn. I felt a growing desire to confront life, to grapple with it, to prevail. I was convinced of my survival.”
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“We are all optimists after all. I’m also one of those who imagine themselves immune to death and prison”
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“I feel myself getting stronger, more determined; my desire to live, to fight, to endure, intensifies.”
.
“I want to live, to live, to be alive, to return to life, damn it.”
.
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I’m very glad I read this, but hugely relieved to finish it because the suffering depicted was relentless. Hugely compelling though and I’m counting all my blessings.
.
Thank you @peirenepress and @tandemcollectiveuk for sending me this for the IWD readalong with @the_wistful_reader (check her excellent review)
.
In 1941, teenager Dalia and her family are deported from Lithuania to a labour camp in Siberia. She is the strongest in her family and labours 16 hours a day. Aged 21, she escapes the Gulag and returns to her homeland. She keeps her memories on scraps of paper and buries them in a glass jar in the garden so that they are hidden from the KGB. They’re discovered in 1991, four years after her death.
.
“You have just taken your first step in the battle for life.”
This account is extraordinary in how immediate and vital the writing is. The conditions in which these poor people had to exist were deeply harrowing and they were utterly brutalised. The descriptions of this icy hell and bleak assistance are very vivid and the suffering relentless. And yet the hope and resilience of Dalia are remarkable:
“During the days that followed, a kind of tenacity began to take shape as part of my character. I became stubborn. I felt a growing desire to confront life, to grapple with it, to prevail. I was convinced of my survival.”
.
“We are all optimists after all. I’m also one of those who imagine themselves immune to death and prison”
.
“I feel myself getting stronger, more determined; my desire to live, to fight, to endure, intensifies.”
.
“I want to live, to live, to be alive, to return to life, damn it.”
.
.
I’m very glad I read this, but hugely relieved to finish it because the suffering depicted was relentless. Hugely compelling though and I’m counting all my blessings.
.
Thank you @peirenepress and @tandemcollectiveuk for sending me this for the IWD readalong with @the_wistful_reader (check her excellent review)